Ishmael Reed Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Neo-Hoodoo is the 8 basic dances of 19th century New Orleans' Place Congo- the Calinda the Bamboula the Chacta the Babouille the Conjaille the Juba the Congo and the VooDoo- modernized into the Philly Dog, the Hully Gully, the Funky Chicken, the Popcorn, the Boogaloo and the dance of great American choreographer Buddy Bradley.

  Ishmael Reed

  Dog, New Orleans, Popcorn

  8 Copy quote

• Hateful material travels the globe. A few years ago, CNN, America's Der Sturmer, ran a story about Black parents being so low down that they abandoned their children and the children had to eat rats. I was at a University in Wisconsin at the time and the mother of a student from South Africa called to see whether the story was true. She had seen it all the way over there. The story was untrue. The children lied. CNN never corrected the story.

  Ishmael Reed

  Mother, Children, Years

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• I think there are fundamentalists all over the world. I think all religions have fundamentalists who have different interpretations of scriptures that are very vague.

  Ishmael Reed

  Thinking, Having Fun, Different

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• Americans are fickle. And what constitutes the enemy is always changing. Believe it or not, at one time Blacks were the favored model minority over Asian Americans.

  Ishmael Reed

  Believe, Enemy, Asian

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• I think Black intellectuals see too deeply. That's the problem. It's a cause of anxiety, because we see things differently.

  Ishmael Reed

  Thinking, Anxiety, Black

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• Richard Price got a million dollar advance on one fake film book based on a paragraph outline and is able to seduce gullible White reviewers who know less about ghetto life than he. The New York Times has devoted more space to Price's tourist, ghetto writing than to any Black writer in history.

  Ishmael Reed

  New York, Book, Writing

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• I wasn't part of any sixties movement. I'm skeptical of movements. I'm part of the times that I'm in.

  Ishmael Reed

  Movement, Skeptical, Sixty

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• Whites have been the most subsidized group in the history of the United States and maybe the history of the world, while Blacks were enslaved and were the assets of Whites.

  Ishmael Reed

  Groups, United States, World

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• I walked out on American Gangster: this evil piece of dreck. Defenders of this junk say that these movies give Black actors jobs. So did "Birth of a Nation."

  Ishmael Reed

  Jobs, Evil, Giving

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• My stuff is direct. Critics have compared my writing style with boxing all the way back to 1978 when my first book of essays appeared: it was compared to Muhammad Ali's style.

  Ishmael Reed

  Book, Writing, Boxing

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• David Simon [the creator of The Wire] and I have a running controversy for years. It all stems from a telephone call I made to KPFA [Pacifica radio] when he was a guest there in the 90's on Chris Welche's show. He was going around the country with a Black kid from the Ghetto to promote something called The Corner - it was all about Blacks as degenerates selling drugs, etc.

  Ishmael Reed

  Running, Country, Kids

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• Two of the great leaders of the past - Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass - had White fathers - who deserted them. Now Margo Jefferson, who is hard on me and the fellas, wrote in the Times that she has nocturnal, erotic fantasies about John Wayne. What's up with these feminists? Do you see these double standards these feminists have? They dream about John Wayne, but they're hard on us [Black men].

  Ishmael Reed

  Dream, Father, Past

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• I have Black guys who tell me they put my books on their bed stands to read at night like something for guidance or information. That really pleases me a lot. I think my work has changed some things. It's changed me.

  Ishmael Reed

  Book, Night, Thinking

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so--called educational system, whichis nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one's ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the "educational system" are the prime sources of racism in the United States.

  Ishmael Reed

  Loyalty, Education, White

  4 Copy quote

• The descendants of Holy Roman Empire monarchies became feeble-minded in the twentieth century, and after World War I had been done in by the democracies; some were kept on to entertain the tourists, like the one they have in England.

  Ishmael Reed

  War, Democracy, Tourists

  Ishmael Reed (1995). “Airing Dirty Laundry”, Perseus Books

  4 Copy quote

• I'm beginning to believe that Killer Illiteracy ought to rank near heart disease and cancer as one of the leading causes of deathamong Americans. What you don't know can indeed hurt you, and so those who can neither read nor write lead miserable lives, like Richard Wright's character, Bigger Thomas, born dead with no past or future.

  Ishmael Reed

  Education, Hurt, Cancer

  Ishmael Reed (1988). “Writin' is fightin': thirty-seven years of boxing on paper”, Scribner

  4 Copy quote

• When I say Afro-American aesthetic, I'm not just talking about the United States, I'm talking about the Americas. People in the Latin countries read my books because they share the same international aesthetic that I'm into and have been into for a long time. And it's multicultural.

  Ishmael Reed

  Country, Latin, Book

  5 Copy quote

• My work holds up the mirror to hypocrisy, which puts me in a tradition of American writing that reaches back to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

  Ishmael Reed

  Writing, Mirrors, Hypocrisy

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• I have T.V. on all the time when I'm writing. I have music on. I'm engaged with the world.

  Ishmael Reed

  Writing, World, Engaged

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  6 Copy quote

• The Afrocentric exploration of the black past only scratches the surface. A full examination of the ancestry of those who are referred to in the newspapers as blacks and African Americans must include Europe and Native America.

  Ishmael Reed

  Past, Europe, America

  Ishmael Reed (1995). “Airing Dirty Laundry”, Perseus Books

  5 Copy quote

• [David] Mamet is another hypocrite. His idea of Black man is a pimp who abuses women, [Edmond], yet his play Oleanna [1994] ends with a White professor slapping an uppity feminist, at least the version I saw at San Francisco's ACT.

  Ishmael Reed

  Hypocrite, Men, Play

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  7 Copy quote

• Constance L. Rice, co-director of the Los Angeles of the Advancement Project, told the Times that Seltzer might have been influenced by David Simon's fake ghetto series, "The Wire." It figures. Isn't this sexism? Isn't this a double standard? They're hard on this young woman for her fake ghetto book, yet praise these White guys for theirs. So there's a big market in downing Black men.

  Ishmael Reed

  Book, Ghetto, Men

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  6 Copy quote

• What I can't understand why Blacks can't achieve royal status when it comes to forms that they have largely created? I mean there's a White King of Rock n' Roll, there's a White King of Jazz, how come we can never achieve titles of royalty in these fields we are supposed to prevail in? They held a so called Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the other night, where White judges credit people who resemble them with the invention of Rock and Roll. I didn't even see Blacks in the audience.

  Ishmael Reed

  Kings, Mean, Night

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  7 Copy quote

• I try to do what has never been done before.

  Ishmael Reed

  Trying, Done

  4 Copy quote

• In Crash, you've got a pathological cop who at the end justifies police brutality. He tells the naïve, young cop that you're going to end up the same as him. He's the most sympathetic character in the movie. So, the naïve cop ends up murdering this Black kid and tries to cover up the evidence. It sort of justifies police brutality and the planting of evidence which is what happened in the O.J. Simpson case.

  Ishmael Reed

  Character, Kids, Police

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

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